Favorite and least favorite changes in Pathologic 3?
been saving this one for last because i wasn't sure how long it'd take to answer.
granted, i've only played patho three once, but here goes
less exploration ability. part of this is because of the updated travel system, but part of it also felt a bit like dev decision. i don't know if there wasn't enough time or resources or if they just thought there was already so much going on with the game that they didn't want it to be overwhelming, but i personally love to explore virtual environments and was disappointed by how little there was in terms of... idk, secrets? easter eggs? kind of a bummer!
they dropped the ball on bad grief so hard. the rest of the apple basket gang is going into "mixed feelings," but it feels from the beginning like they're going to set up bad grief as being more important than he winds up being in the game.
i know this might just be a me thing - my computer, my poor gaming skills - but the combat in 3 was worse than it was in 2 or even classic. every time i entered one of the godawful burned districts, i'd get ganged up on by six guys at once who do not care that i am pointing a gun at me and then they all kill me in three seconds. unless i'm manic ant actively dying running to get past them. like, i'm not expecting a pathologic game to have good combat because that is not and never will be an aspect of the game i give a shit about, but it is just so so so difficult to get around. i get so frustrated with these sections that i want to just give up on them.
the english voice acting. daniil is fine, but i don't know why they changed clara's voice actress and artemy's new voice acting is horrible. go menkhu give us nothing!!!
things i have mixed feelings on:
the updated travel system. thematically i think that it's fine - just because i want to explore doesn't mean that daniil does (though i think there's an argument to be made about what could have been done to highlight his changing perspective on the town or the passage of time as it warps, etc etc), and this way we can't skip out of doing the quest with the shabnak. but to me, it just feels kind of clunky.
the story surrounding the apple basket gang. this iteration of them is very interesting, and i don't totally hate it, but it also doesn't exist in a vacuum. i miss the way this quest was done in classic, where it examined how the women of the town interacted with each other. it was fun, it was interesting... this one is just kind of frustrating. i'm not gonna get into how i feel about the apple basket gang as a concept because that has more to do with 2 than 3, but it makes sense they'd carry it over into 3. the way they did it however, feels kind of bizarre to me. i feel like it contributes to the burdabaiting in patho 3. like yes, of course, these are all important characters, they are part of the bound even if they're not utopians (more on that later)! but it still feels like the big story beats around them are focused on a ship chart. it looks like daniil -> artemy -> lara but also artemy -> lara <- rubin and don't get me wrong, this is all very, very funny! but artemy being friends with these people literally should not matter to daniil. i think the original premise for this quest in classic made way more sense.
eva. i can't even get into it all without making that its separate post.
the train graveyard. one of my favorite quests in bachelor classic was finding the albino for sticky, and i'm so glad there's a variation on that quest here.
the factions weren't really a thing in patho 2, and while i could see where you might introduce the utopians in patho 3 in a similar was as the termites in patho 2, i actually kind of like that they're not a totally defined or explained faction. to me, it adds to the horror of being kept in the dark.
mark karminsky, aglaya lilich, and the expansion on the inquisition. the expansion of the capital, too. serafima and platon. wretched telman. getting to see thanatica. i even thought the farkhad stuff was neat.
the focus on mental illness. the apathy-mania scale was kinda frustrating, i won't lie, though i've only played it once so maybe on a second go-around i'll do better. the the focus on playing as a mentally ill character is still fairly unique, especially as it's just one aspect of his character, and while it affects a lot of the narrative and the actions, i would not say that it is what the story is about. and that's awesome.
and now i must restart my computer, but i'll post more as i replay
